Corporate Event Season

It's been a busy year. I've been working on events with The Team Building Company and I've found myself specialising more in Treasure Hunts, while doing the occasional Murder Mystery.

The other interesting area for me is facilitated team building. This is working with tools such as Belbin and Myers-Briggs and it would take me more into the role of facilitator rather than event manager.

However, you can't be everything. I'll have to see what the winter brings.

Off to Budapest

I'm off to Budapest for a Treasure Hunt. I love the trips abroad when they come up three or four times a year. The most exotic was a spy themed event in Istanbul when I spent the day in a Turkish Bath as an undercover agent. Budapest seems just as exotic.

The best bit is the planning trip, which usually takes place over a weekend. I fly out on my own and spend a couple of days on foot exploring the city and collating the Treasure Hunt. Most city airports are approximately half an hour from the city centre and the bus typically costs around £3. It's details like this that make travel around Europe a doddle. Of course there are parts of the World that I wouldn't approach with such relaxed expectations, but Europe is fairly predictable.

So, Budapest is the next desination. The best so far this year was Sintra in Portugal. Will this surpass that experience?

The Season Has Started

It's been a busy week. Monday and Tuesday was taken up with a Belbin team building event and then I had to go to Leeds for a hostage take on Thursday. On Friday I did exactly the same thing in Brighton.

I usually do a Hostage about once a month, so it was unusal do have one the day after another. We storm the room and take a person or something like a laptop hostage. The group then divides into teams and takes part in a themed treasure hunt style event finishing up with getting the person or equipment back.

It's always very fast paced and great fun.

Edinburgh Treasure Hunt

I was in Edinburgh for a Treasure Hunt recently. It's a great city for this sort of event because it's so compact and there is so much that can be experienced on foot in a half day. You have the sights of Princes Street, Calton Hill which gives a stunning view of the whole city and the wonderful old city.

The photo shows the clock on top of The Balmoral Hotel which runs three minutes first. Why do you think that is?

Corporate Events in 2011

The corporate event year 2011 is well underway and, as each year has its own character, we can start to assess how this one is looking. We came into 2011 with concerns that The Royal Wedding and the layout of the Bank Holidays in April would put a real dampner on the early season. There was also the ongoing financial outlook - how would that effect the year? First of all March has been very strong and April is looking good too, inspite of those unusual events. The UK's consumers are certainly suffering but corporates seem to have recovered and generally they seem willing to look at entertainment rather than just events with measurable business outcomes. Consumers tend to lag behind corporates in their reactions to financial events. For most corporates the times of trouble and cutbacks are behind then and they are looking at a more positive future. This is backed up by recent surveys which have found that corporate risk appetite is on the rise again. So, it's early days but the outlook for 2011 certainly looks positive at this stage.

Duck Herding For Spy School

It happens occasionally. There's an event with a very specific theme but the client wants an activity as part of it that has nothing to do with the theme. So, how do you incorporate duck herding into a Spy School themed event?

Well, it's all down to designing a plausible story. So, there's a gaggle of radioactive geese that has been trained to enter Parliament during the next sitting to bring chaos to the Western world. We call it Radioquacktive.





What's not plausible about that?